Health
Life after death: Take a glimpse into the world of cryonics
Since the age of 13, Joseph Kowalsky has harbored a fascination with life after death, pondering ways to extend his existence indefinitely.
Today, Kowalsky, now 59, is among some 2,000 individuals who have signed up with the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan, betting on a future where death is not the end.
Chilling prospect of immortality
Cryonics, the process at the heart of Kowalsky’s hopes, involves preserving human bodies at ultra-low temperatures in the anticipation that future science will one day revive them.
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Shortly after a person dies, organizations like the Cryonics Institute use a heart-lung resuscitator, circulate a medical-grade antifreeze in the blood and suspend the body in aluminum pods filled with liquid nitrogen.
Dennis Kowalski, current president of the Cryonics Institute (and no relation to Joseph Kowalsky), told Fox News that over 250 individuals are currently in “suspension” at the Michigan facility.
Could defying death be affordable?
The Cryonics Institute is just one player in a burgeoning industry.
Alcor, the world’s oldest cryonics company, which is based in Scottsdale, Arizona, boasts a state-of-the-art facility where more than 200 individuals are preserved.
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For those opting for whole-body preservation, the price tag is $200,000, while brain-only preservation costs $80,000.
Alcor CEO James Arrowood dispels the notion that cryonics is solely for the wealthy, highlighting that many clients use life insurance policies to cover costs.
“About 80% of people who sign up are middle-class,” Arrowood told Fox News.
He pointed out that the clientele includes notable figures such as baseball legend Ted Williams, whose head and body were cryopreserved separately.
Skeptics cast doubt
Critics dismiss cryonics as speculative and unproven, labeling it an “iceberg scheme” lacking scientific backing.
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“It’s a sad case of people being beguiled by a very understandable dream of resurrection,” Clive Coen of King’s College London told Fox News.
The neuroscience professor raised concerns over the damage inflicted during the preservation and revival process, warning that “there will be billions of mini-strokes in every millimeter of brain tissue” due to the inability of antifreeze to traverse the brain’s complex landscape.
Hope springs eternal for death defiers
There is currently no scientific evidence or successful case of a human being revived from a cryonically preserved state.
Despite the skepticism, Joseph Kowalsky, who formerly worked with the Cryonics Institute, remains undeterred.
“Worst-case scenario, I’m still dead … And the upside? It could be a potentially life-saving medical technique,” he said.
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As science and ethics continue to grapple with the implications of cryonics, individuals like Kowalsky illustrate a deep-seated hope for defying mortality, one frozen body at a time.
Andres del Aguila and Griff Jenkins contributed to this report.
Health
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Health
One state leads country in human bird flu with nearly 40 confirmed cases
A child in California is presumed to have H5N1 bird flu, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH).
As of Dec. 23, there had been 36 confirmed human cases of bird flu in the state, according to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).
This represents more than half of the human cases in the country.
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The latest pediatric patient, who lives in San Francisco, experienced fever and conjunctivitis (pink eye) as a result of the infection.
The unnamed patient was not hospitalized and has fully recovered, according to the SFDPH.
The child tested positive for bird flu at the SFDPH Public Health Laboratory. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will perform additional tests to confirm the result.
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It is not yet known how the child was exposed to the virus and an investigation is ongoing.
“I want to assure everyone in our city that the risk to the general public is low, and there is no current evidence that the virus can be transmitted between people,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of health, in the press release.
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“We will continue to investigate this presumptive case, and I am urging all San Franciscans to avoid direct contact with sick or dead birds, especially wild birds and poultry. Also, please avoid unpasteurized dairy products.”
Samuel Scarpino, director of AI and life sciences and professor of health sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, is calling for “decisive action” to protect individuals who may be in contact with infected livestock and also to alert the public about the risks associated with wild birds and infected backyard flocks.
“While I agree that the risk to the broader public remains low, we continue to see signs of escalating risk associated with this outbreak,” he told Fox News Digital.
Experts have warned that the possibility of mutations in the virus could enable person-to-person transmission.
“While the H5N1 virus is currently thought to only transmit from animals to humans, multiple mutations that can enhance human-to-human transmission have been observed in the severely sick American,” Dr. Jacob Glanville, CEO of Centivax, a San Francisco biotechnology company, told Fox News Digital.
“This highlights the requirement for vigilance and preparation in the event that additional mutations create a human-transmissible pandemic strain.”
As of Jan. 10, there have been a total of 707 infected cattle in California, per reports from the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).
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In the last 30 days alone, the virus has been confirmed in 84 dairy farms in the state.
Health
Chronic Pain Afflicts Billions of People. It’s Time for a Revolution.
“In the beginning, everyone thought they were going to find this one breakthrough pain drug that would replace opioids,” Gereau said. Increasingly, though, it’s looking like chronic pain, like cancer, could end up having a range of genetic and cellular drivers that vary both by condition and by the particular makeup of the person experiencing it. “What we’re learning is that pain is not just one thing,” Gereau added. “It’s a thousand different things, all called ‘pain.’”
For patients, too, the landscape of chronic pain is wildly varied. Some people endure a miserable year of low-back pain, only to have it vanish for no clear reason. Others aren’t so lucky. A friend of a friend spent five years with extreme pain in his arm and face after roughhousing with his son. He had to stop working, couldn’t drive, couldn’t even ride in a car without a neck brace. His doctors prescribed endless medications: the maximum dose of gabapentin, plus duloxetine and others. At one point, he admitted himself to a psychiatric ward, because his pain was so bad that he’d become suicidal. There, he met other people who also became suicidal after years of living with terrible pain day in and day out.
The thing that makes chronic pain so awful is that it’s chronic: a grinding distress that never ends. For those with extreme pain, that’s easy to understand. But even less severe cases can be miserable. A pain rating of 3 or 4 out of 10 sounds mild, but having it almost all the time is grueling — and limiting. Unlike a broken arm, which gets better, or tendinitis, which hurts mostly in response to overuse, chronic pain makes your whole world shrink. It’s harder to work, and to exercise, and even to do the many smaller things that make life rewarding and rich.
It’s also lonely. When my arms first went crazy, I could barely function. But even after the worst had passed, I saw friends rarely; I still couldn’t drive more than a few minutes, or sit comfortably in a chair, and I felt guilty inviting people over when there wasn’t anything to do. As Christin Veasley, director and co-founder of the Chronic Pain Research Alliance, puts it: “With acute pain, medications, if you take them, they get you over a hump, and you go on your way. What people don’t realize is that when you have chronic pain, even if you’re also taking meds, you rarely feel like you were before. At best, they can reduce your pain, but usually don’t eliminate it.”
A cruel Catch-22 around chronic pain is that it often leads to anxiety and depression, both of which can make pain worse. That’s partly because focusing on a thing can reinforce it, but also because emotional states have physical effects. Both anxiety and depression are known to increase inflammation, which can also worsen pain. As a result, pain management often includes cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation practice or other coping skills. But while those tools are vital, it’s notoriously hard to reprogram our reactions. Our minds and bodies have evolved both to anticipate pain and to remember it, making it hard not to worry. And because chronic pain is so uncomfortable and isolating, it’s also depressing.
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